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As the TTC board contemplates another New Year’s fare increase — the seventh in as many years — there’s growing concern that the rising cost of transportation is eating through the empty pockets of its neediest riders at a disproportionate rate.

Transit officials and poverty advocates make no bones about the fact that the poorest TTC riders frequently have the fewest transportation options and the longest commutes.

But the TTC doesn’t have the operating funds to subsidize an income-based fare. That isn’t likely to change, whichever federal party is elected next week. While transit is crucial for many of Toronto’s lower-income residents, traditionally Ottawa only funds transit capital projects such as subways. That means it would be up to the city and province to support a low-income ticket or pass.

The TTC has a VIP pass that assists some low-wage workers. There are 117 employers, including the City of Toronto, that subscribe to what is essentially a bulk buy of adult Metropasses in exchange for a 10 to 12 per cent discount, depending on the number of employees enrolled. Those with 500 or more subscribing workers get a $141.50 Metropass for $124.50.

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Ontario Disabilities Support Program and Ontario Works recipients are eligible for some transportation subsidies, based on the frequency of medical appointments and work, said Anna McGrath, of Toronto Employment and Social Services. Ontario Works recipients can receive between $30 and $120 a month depending on the frequency of their program commitments.

Last year, the city issued about $25 million in transportation benefits to eligible Ontario Works clients, with 91 per cent of that covered by the province. Next year the province will cover 100 per cent.

Still, many residents on social assistance and low-wage workers are paying more for transit than city workers subscribing to the VIP program, said Deputy Mayor Pam McConnell, who is leading the city’s Poverty Reduction Strategy, expected to report on a transit fare equity strategy early next year.

“We have identified access to transportation as a major component or part of relieving poverty,” she said.

That the TTC is among the broad gathering of city agencies and boards working on poverty reduction is a step forward, said McConnell.

“The TTC has never seen themselves — in fact, they’ve said over and over again: ‘We’re not a social agency, we’re a transportation infrastructure and you pay as you go,’” she said.

The electronic Presto card, which will be available across the TTC by the end of next year, will enable the transit system to offer any kind of concession fare. While seniors and students are the traditional discount recipients, there’s no practical reason other groups couldn’t receive concessions, said TTC Deputy CEO Chris Upfold.

However, he said, “It is somebody else’s job to decide who is eligible, to figure out how it should work if there is an income-adjusted fare, and how to fund that.”

McConnell stresses that there’s more to transportation equity than adjusted fares. Low-income residents, particularly in the city’s suburbs, suffer other transit-related difficulties.

“Going to grocery stores, dropping off at daycare, getting to jobs on time, the fact that the subway’s not open when they have to leave,” she said.

“The overcrowding of buses, the way in which the buses were sporadically coming. It’s amazing, when you’re out in those areas that are so TTC-dependent, how much this frames their lives. To add to it, the cost of getting on and off becomes so onerous on low-income people.”

Discount could be a life-changer for mother

Saving $50 a month on the cost of a TTC Metropass could be life-changing, says Toronto mother Emily Contini, whose part-time job checking groceries at Metro brings home about $1,300 a month.

Contini, 28, says she could put $50 — the amount she thinks is a fair discount for low-income riders on the $141.50 price of a TTC Metropass — toward first and last month’s rent on another apartment, something bigger than the one-bedroom she shares with her mother and son Christopher, 8.

This year’s move to letting children 12 and younger ride free on the TTC has helped, she said.

But Contini would like to see the TTC offer a discount to riders with household incomes under $20,000, using an income tax return as proof.

“If they had something like that, I’m on it,” said Contini, who is proud that she manages without social assistance except for subsidized child care.

The TTC is the family’s main form of transportation. Contini uses it to get to her grocery job and to her occasional gig as a cleaner at Exhibition Place. It’s also a lifeline to dentist appointments and recreation.

“I’m a hard-working person trying to get by. I didn’t have the white picket fence life,” she says.

Although Contini has applied for subsidized housing, she’s been told the wait could be 10 to 12 years. She lives near Yonge and Davisville in a privately owned building that is near good schools but has repeatedly been afflicted with bedbugs.

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